Noelle Revaz - Böcker

T., an acclaimed but aging actor, and Efina, a passionate theatergoer, are engaged in an obsessive love affair that careens from attraction to repulsion. They compulsively write letters - often to express their intense dislike of one another - which are sent or unsent, answered or unanswered. They meet, they break up, they marry, and they get divorced. They neither can live with nor without one another, and this impossible state of affairs lasts all their lives. In between, there are other men and many other women, but throughout, the magic of the theater and the art of make-believe endure. Efina is a tumultuous novel about art, love, disdain, and above all - obsession - told in a quirky, highly original style. It presents an unapologetically dysfunctional yet honest relationship, detailing outrageous thoughts and absurd behaviors in clear and precise prose. What could have been a sad tale of failed love is delightfully transformed by Noelle Revaz into a masterpiece of dark humor.

Considered the standard-bearer for the great Franco-Swiss literary tradition, exemplified by authors such as Jacques Chessex and C. F. Ramuz, No?lle Revaz may also remind English-language readers of Louis-Ferdinand C?line: "With the Animals," her shocking debut, is a novel of mud and blood whose linguistic audaciousness is matched only by its brutality, misanthropy, and gallows humor. Narrated by the singular Paul--a violent, narrowminded farmer whose unceasing labor leaves him with more love for his livestock than his family--"With the Animals" is at once a fantastically exaggerated and entirely honest portrait of masculinity gone mad. With his mute and detested wife and children huddled at his side, Paul is only roused from his regimen of hard labor and casual cruelty when a farmhand, Georges, comes to work on his property for the summer. His sovereignty seemingly threatened, an element of unwanted humanity now injected into his universe, Paul's little kingdom seems ripe at last for a revolution.